Sentencing scheduled for drug-related case

Sentencing scheduled for drug-related case

April 24th, 2018 in Local News

Sentencing is scheduled for June after a Cole County jury last week found a man guilty of one drug-related charge in the second trial of his case.

In June 2017, Lawrence Mosely was ordered to get a new trial after the Cole County prosecutor's office wrongly removed a potential juror, according to a ruling from the state appeals court in Kansas City.

During his first trial in January 2016, a Cole County jury convicted Moseley, 34, of Pacific, of two counts of distributing marijuana — and Circuit Judge Dan Green sentenced him to 12 years on each count, to be served at the same time.

Evidence during his first trial included an undercover Highway Patrol officer's testimony that he twice paid Mosely $130 for a bag of marijuana on two different dates and at two different places in Jefferson City in March 2012.

In its 11-page ruling, written by Judge Cynthia Martin, the three-judge appeals court panel noted Mosely — who is black — challenged "the fact that he was convicted by an all-white jury."

The appeals court ruled the prosecution cut two potential black jurors from serving on Mosely's trial jury — and one of those cuts was because of her race, violating a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that race can't be a factor in deciding to keep someone on the jury or striking them from the list of potential jurors.

For Mosely's second trial in Green's court, two black women sat on the jury. The jury found him guilty of one count of distributing marijuana and not guilty of another similar count.